8. No need for you to care.

No need for you to care.
As if you would.
I had no sooner abandoned agonising over who that rather good Dangerous Davies chap was when it came to me. It was Peter Davison. You know, him from All Creatures Great and Small.
I think he would make a good Charles Paris (an actor and amateur sleuth created by Simon Brett), but so would many other very good actors whose features are irritatingly familiar but whose names you just cannot bring to mind.
Oh, my Leader solved the Hastings and Japp problem, too. "Look in the Radio Times," she advised. "Poirot's always on somewhen over the bank holiday." I did and as usual she was right. Hugh Fraser plays Captain Arthur Hastings and Philip Jackson is the splendidly lugubrious Chief Inspector Japp. It would be churlish not also to mention Pauline Moran, a perfectly cast Miss Lemon.
It must be slightly nettling for an actor when dear ol' Joe/Josephine Public recognizes the face but cannot recall the name. I guess the experienced trouper learns to laugh a lot, especially when clearly mistaken for an entirely different actor.
Remembering names can be a bugger, though, especially as you get older.
I tend to eschew the politically correct and call all unidentified young women who seem to know me "My Love" and all ditto older women "My Dear."
Men become Nipper or Son if they're young and Ol' Mate or Ol' Friend if they're old. Well, I'm sorry if that means you'd just hate me, but I like to think I do look suitably old buffer-ish when I do it.
Anyway, I'm sure I must have liked them, whoever they were (and they me or they wouldn't have bothered to speak), so I try to put across my genuine pleasure at seeing them again.
It seems to work and we invariably part company smiling.
Names are bandied about far too much nowadays, anyway.
You know, I just do not give a toss what the name of any jumped-up politician may be.
The only thing worse than a politician, of whatever ilk, is a child molester.
So why, over recent years, has the media taken to talking about Prime Minister Tony Blair or Deputy Prime Minister John Prescott or Chancellor Gordon Brown, etc. etc.? Am I supposed to be impressed?
Should I take pains to remember every unnecessary, unwanted name?
These are the sort of people who, together with their overpaid civil servant advisors, have succeeded in making a pig's ear of running this country since long before I was born.
Enough of the soap box stuff.
I shall try not to mention anything faintly political again. It is too boring for you and too blood pressure inducing for me.
So shall I now sign off using my real name?
N-a-a-a-h. Why should you care?
And on the grounds that anyone who wants to rule should automatically be debarred from office, I have always avoided seeking election.
Justin Thyme